Lives in the Yiddish
TheatreSHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN
THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"1931-1969

Samuel Tobias(Shmuel Tabatshnikov;
Tabachnikoff)

T. was born in 1861 in Kamenets-Podolsk,
Ukraine. As a youth he was a choir boy and was counted
as an education person.

B. Gorin wrote in his
"History of the Yiddish Theatre": "...and in Poltava
that he
[Leizer Tsukerman] went to Tabatshnikov, who
sang with a cantor and in an Italian opera. In the opera
he was a chorister, and he was entrusted with small
roles [?]. Tsukerman went away with him to Kharkov,
where he went into Goldfaden's troupe. ...also Tabatshnikov
immediately went into lover roles, which until now Zilberman has acted."

T. wandered for several years across Russia, Poland,
Rumania, London and Paris, and in 1886 performed in
Lemberg with Gimpel. B. Gorin wrote: "From his entire
[body of work] [in Gimpel's troupe], Tabatshnikov then
became an important actor, who took Lemberg by storm."

Bertha Kalich's story about
him in her memoirs was that the public was accustomed to
T.'s [mmsh trogn oyf di hent: taking on the hands?].

T. Went with several actors
to America. Here T. debuted on 19 August 1892 at the
Union Theatre as "Absalom".

M. Osherowitz characterized
him as such:
"His roles were singing roles and as a singer he
found success. And because he was well-known on his
own, that in addition

his power on the stage
consists of the eykrsht in them, that he
has a beautiful voice, he has kept strongly to Avraham Goldfaden and from his operettas. For plays,
in which one doesn't sing, Tabatshnikov isn't
considered, and when the so-called Jacob Gordin
epoch began in America's Yiddish theatre,
Tabatshnikov for the first time felt a bit lost.
Abroad he realized that his entire heybt on were
gradually disappearing. He had also, however,
adapted to the new epoch. In Jacob Gordin's "King
Lear", he acted in the role of "Yafe" and
afterwards he already performed in other plays by
Jacob Gordin and became a great onhenger singer...

"...In life he was a
retiring person; he always spoke quietly and kept as
such for he feared he might hinder his star, always
closed, always involved in himself, he loved to
speak about the past, about the former years."

In Gordin's plays T. was
the first to embody the following roles: "Yafe" in
"The Yiddish King Lear" (1892), "Alkhasnador" in
"Der vilder mensh (The Wild Man)" (1893), "Yankl" in
"[Di] litvishe brider lurie (The Lurie Brothers from
Lithuania)" (1894), "Donye" in "Mirele efros"
(1898), "Louis Karshunski" in "Der unbekanter (The
Stranger)" (1905), and "Samuel Melkin" (Shmuel
Zaverukhe) in "Oyf di berg" (1907).

Since 1925 T., because
of illness, has almost stopped acting. In 1926-27 he
was at the Irving Place Art Theatre with Ben Ami.

T., who in America
adopted the name Tobias, and was one of the cofounders
of the Yiddish Actor's Union.

On 28 June 1930 T.
passed away in New York and was brought to his
eternal rest at Mt. Hebron (Cemetery).

TR.'s wife, Ettie, also
acts on the Yiddish stage. T's second son also acts
on the English stage.